“The clothing industry is particularly hard hit by the consequences of the corona crisis. We cannot currently estimate when the market will stabilise, but we assume that consumer behaviour will be very cautious for at least one year,” says Gerd Oliver Seidensticker, executive partner of the Seidensticker
Group.
The future of the group should be secured by the granting of an NRW state guarantee. The financing banks support this process in partnership since the beginning of the corona crisis. Due to the current challenges, the company nevertheless feels compelled to make further consistent adjustments to its
current cost structure in the coming months. The necessary measures will also have to be accompanied by a further reduction in staff.
“Even before corona, we had already started to implement digital processes in many areas, starting with the creation of collections and ending with the presentation via virtual showroom. In addition to these measures, we will also partially outsource services and make ourselves much leaner as a result,”
explains Dr Silvia Bentzinger, CEO of the Seidensticker brand.
In total, we are talking about almost 60 redundancies at the Bielefeld site. Worldwide, the group employs around 2,300 people. In addition to the procurement office in Hong Kong and its four own production facilities in Vietnam and Indonesia, Seidensticker will also keep its head office at the Bielefeld location in the future. The corporate group’s focus will continue to be on the Seidensticker brand and the private label business.
All the planned measures have already been presented to the works council. Extensive consultations and negotiations have already taken place with the latter and the responsible trade union, taking all legal and social parameters into account, and have been concluded with the common goal of a socially
acceptable reduction in staff.
“We deeply regret that the events of recent months make these measures unavoidable. As a family business, these decisions are particularly difficult for us – but they are absolutely necessary to secure the future of our company,” says Frank Seidensticker, executive partner of the Seidensticker Group.